The Story of My Paper

I guess the idea the idea for my paper came from an Elder's Quorum discussion we had a few months ago on what it means to be a man. Later someone from our Elder's Quorum posted a video on the art of manliness on facebook:

The video talked about going back to the masculinity found in males of our grandparent's generation or becoming a retro-sexual. I found this very interesting and it was something I had thought about for awhile after our discussion. When thinking of ideas for my paper I noticed that made a lot of posts on Bond, my Grandpa, and Mad Men. I noticed that all of these post had a common theme. All of them were focused on a certain generation, particularly the period between the 50's and 60's. This brought me back to the video and discussion that left impressions on me a few months back.
Then I thought to myself, what if I wrote a paper on the comparisons between my grandparent's generation and my own? I was able to find various examples in the Bond books I had collected and I began to synthesize ideas for my paper. I began with a post exploring the themes and values of grandparents generation because I was hoping to gather some ideas for a thesis. After I received feedback from roomates, a few facebook friends and from conversations with relatives (most notably my grandma) I was able to generate 5 different thesis statements based on the subject. I had received some great feedback on these as well and I started to brainstorm with some pre-writing exercises. I started by trying to find the opinion of women on Bond within the novels. Next I wrote down the reasons of why I was writing this paper. This helped to further develop many of the ideas I had for my thesis and I believe that it gave me further motivation and purpose to write my paper. I looked at patterns found in the Bond novels and movies as well to learn more about Bond a s a man. Later, I went to the library to find a general reference book for my paper and I found Harmon and Holman's Handbook to literature very helpful. I began to explore the genre of the Bond novels from here and I was able to find some interesting elements about escape literature that made their way into my paper. After these writing exercises I was ready to start my paper and I posted the rough draft to get some feedback. I found the feedback to be constructive and largely beneficial to the final rough draft of my paper. I also was able to get my roommate to read it and he was able to help as well. I posted my final paper to be read for your enjoyment and I hope that this whole process will have contributed to a great and engaging paper.